Lee Child and the Macho of Minimalism
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
The author Lee Child makes his home in a Manhattan condominium where white predominates. More Photos » watches
By
JOANNE KAUFMAN
Published: August 30, 2013
To hear Lee Child tell it, the whole thing began well over half a century ago with a picture book. rolex
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“It was part of a series, but the only one in our library was ‘My Home in America,’ ” said Mr. Child, 58, the British-born author of nearly 20 best-selling thrillers centered on an idiosyncratic ex-military cop who answers to Jack Reacher (when he answers at all). “On each page there was a picture of a stereotypical residence like a prairie farmhouse, a California bungalow, a New England saltbox. rolex submariner replica
“But the only picture that was drawn from the inside of the house looking out was Manhattan ,” Mr. Child added. “It had this apple-cheeked little boy sitting on a low windowsill looking out at the cityscape at night. And there were all the iconic buildings to anchor the message: This is New York. And I just felt, ‘I am that boy; I have to be there.’ ” rolex datejust replica
And so he is, on the 25th floor of a condominium in the Flatiron district. From the windows that run the length of the 1,000-square-foot space — a two-bedroom apartment turned into a one-bedroom — Mr. Child can see the Empire State Building , the Chrysler Building and the Metropolitan Life Tower. replica rolex
“My building is in many ways undistinguished,” he said. “It’s like a dorm. There are a lot of first-year Wall Streeters, post-graddy types around, dudes with backward baseball caps going to get their pizza. It gives the place a slightly tiresome youthful air. But all those images in that picture book — now I’m looking at them for real. I just love the view.”
Mr. Child also loves the convenience. The No. 6 train is at one end of the block, the N and the R are at the other; no sweat navigating the East or West Side. Midtown and the Village are an easy journey by foot. Perhaps best of all, the commute to the office is an elevator ride to an apartment on the seventh floor that Mr. Child and his wife, Jane, bought in 2004 and originally envisioned as a pied-à-terre.
The couple added to their holdings the next year, “when it was obvious that we were going to be spending more time in the city,” said Mr. Child, who is lean and tall — 6-foot-4 to Jack Reacher’s 6-5 — and affable.
“Male genre authors always make their protagonist taller than they are,” he said. “Female genre writers give their protagonists blond hair and slimmer thighs.”
The success of his novels — the latest, “Never Go Back” comes out Tuesday — has allowed Mr. Child to indulge his perfectionist streak. “If I’m going to do something, I’m going to try and do it right,” he said. “So I decided to do this apartment up to a standard that is ridiculous, frankly. It’s the classic mistake of putting so much money into doing up a small apartment. In terms of getting my investment back, it will be 20 years, but that was never the point. It was about just enjoying the process.”
The floor, now white concrete tile, used to slope two inches from the far wall to the front door but was scrupulously leveled; the ceiling, which had a bit of a belly, was flattened; and the windows were replaced with custom-built models, the right angles everywhere made sharp and exact enough to warm the heart of a Pythagoras.
“The contractor told me he felt like he was working inside a Swiss watch, because everything was so precise,” said Mr. Child, who, on the evidence of his apartment’s surfaces — kitchen counter, tabletop, windowsills, all empty white expanses — is as tidy as a Trappist.
“I love minimalism, which to me is more than a decorative style,” he said. “It’s a fundamental choice which ties into my character Jack Reacher. He has this desire — he wants everything he needs and nothing he doesn’t.
“Fortunately, my books were doing really, really well and I was rich beyond my wildest dreams, essentially. And at some point you realize you can have everything you want, which leads you to the big question: What is it that you want? The easy thing would have been to run out and buy a big trophy place.” Mr. Child does, in fact, have vacation properties in France and in the English countryside. “But I like small, compact spaces. This has everything I need and nothing I don’t.”
But really, fans shouldn’t go around confusing Mr. Child with Mr. Reacher. Would the nomadic Jack, who owns little more than a toothbrush, change his décor every few years to fulfill some furniture fantasy in the manner of his creator? “Suppose that in the ’50s MoMA had built five replicas of a standard apartment and asked five designers to outfit it,” Mr. Child said. “Basically that’s what I decided to do.”
He started with Florence Knoll and has since moved on to Saarinen. Two of the Finnish designer’s signature womb chairs and the quartet of armless office chairs around the dining table — half of them red, half gray — are the only pops of color in the apartment. “Next,” said Mr. Child, “I’m probably going to do Eames.”
His possessions, mainly a large collection of books, are deliberately kept out of sight behind floor-to-ceiling cabinets, on shelves in the kitchen — little cooking goes on — and in a free-standing koa-wood divider that separates the bedroom from the living room/dining area.
“Some people have absolutely massive walls of books,” Mr. Child said, “but for me it would have been too visually distracting. I’m completely a slave to words. If there are words in a room I have to be reading them. I expected the apartment to feel serene, because it’s white, but it’s super-serene and I realized it’s because my eye is not constantly roving over words.”
Mr. Child, who was born Jim Grant, grew up in Birmingham, England, and spent two decades as a director of features, documentaries and commercials at Granada Television. When he lost his job at 40, a victim of industry belt-tightening, “it was scary, but I also sensed it was a great opportunity,” he said. “I thought, ‘If you’re going to do something different, this is the time to really go for it.’ Writing a book was everything I would want to do, because there’s no boss. It was the product of my previous main fun, which was reading.
“But to say you’re going to make a living out of writing fiction is fundamentally ludicrous,” Mr. Child continued. “It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to be hit by lightning twice on the same day that I win the lottery.’ But someone’s got to make it.”
Mr. Child, of course, is that someone. Now, he can live anywhere. He has toyed with the idea of moving out of his building, buying a bigger apartment, one with enough room for an office; but, you know, on second thought, he’ll stay right where he is. “No one will ever believe this,” he said. “But I am just too lazy to do that change-of-address stuff.”